has achieved many notable feats on innumerable occasions.

Such a man, of course, is not without knowledge on the matters
of which he speaks. He has probably hunted several times without
pleasure, or fished or shot here and there without success. But upon
these slender foundations he could not rear the stupendous fabric
of his deeds unless he had read much, and listened carefully to
the narrations of others. By the aid of a lively and unscrupulous
imagination, he gradually transmutes their experiences into his own.
What he has read becomes, in the end, what he has done, and thus, in
time, the Spurious Sportsman is sent forth into the world equipped
in a dazzling armour of sporting mendacity. And yet mendacity is,
perhaps, too harsh a word; for it is of the essence of true falsehood
that it should hope to be believed, in order that it may deceive. But,
in the Spurious Sportsman's ventures into the marvellous, there is
generally something that gives ground for the exercise of charity,
and the appalled listener may hope that even the narrator is not
so thoroughly convinced of the reality of his exploits as he would,
apparently, desire others to be. And there is this also to be said
in excuse, that sport, which calls for the exercise of some of the
noblest attributes of man's nature, not infrequently leads him into
mean traps and pitfalls. For there are few men who can aver, with
perfect accuracy, that they have never added a foot or two to their
longest shot, or to the highest jump of their favourite horse, and
have never, in short, exaggerated a difficulty in order to increase
the triumph of overcoming it. But the modesty that confines most men
within reasonable limits of untruthfulness has no restraining power
over the Spurious Sportsman, to whom somewhat, therefore, may be
forgiven for the sake of the warning he affords.